Search results for "Environmental Biotechnology"
showing 10 items of 568 documents
Occurrence of illicit drugs in two wastewater treatment plants in the South of Italy
2017
In this study the occurrence and the behavior of illicit drugs and their metabolites have been investigated for two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) (namely, WWTP-1 and WWTP-2) located in Sicily (island of Italy). Samples were analyzed for methamphetamine, cocaine (COC), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), methadone (METH), 2-ethylidene-1,5-dimethyl-3,3-diphenylpyrrolidine (EDDP), 3,4-methylenedioxy amphetamine (MDA); 3,4-methylenedioxy ethylamphetamine (MDEA), 11-nor-9-carboxy-Î9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC-COOH) and Benzoylecgonine (BEG). The BEG, COC, MOR and THC-COOH were found at the highest concentration in both WWTPs. The Wastewater-based epidemiology calculation for BEG, COC…
Predictive modeling of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) agonism
2020
Abstract The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) plays a key role in the regulation of gene expression in metabolic machinery and detoxification systems. In the recent years, this receptor has attracted interest as a therapeutic target for immunological, oncogenic and inflammatory conditions. In the present report, in silico and in vitro approaches were combined to study the activation of the AhR. To this end, a large database of chemical compounds with known AhR agonistic activity was employed to build 5 classifiers based on the Adaboost (AdB), Gradient Boosting (GB), Random Forest (RF), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms, respectively. The built classifier…
Simultaneous retrieval of global scale Vegetation Optical Depth, surface roughness, and soil moisture using X-band AMSR-E observations
2019
Abstract The radiative transfer scheme implemented for the retrieval of soil moisture from passive microwaves is a function of scattering, polarization mixing and attenuation effects of soil and vegetation. Theses factors are usually represented by Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD), vegetation scattering albedo, and surface roughness parameter, along with soil moisture. The VOD is the degree to which vegetation attenuates the microwave radiation. It has generally the dominant effect from vegetation, whereas scattering is negligible and close to zero. The surface roughness (which varies in space but not much in time) is until recently, often assumed to be a global constant. In this work, we att…
Modelling the frequency distribution of inter-arrival times from daily precipitation time-series in North-West Italy
2018
Abstract The discrete three-parameter Lerch distribution is used to analyse the frequency distribution of inter-arrival times derived from 26 daily precipitation time-series, collected by stations located throughout a 28,000 km2 area in North-West Italy (altitudes ranging from 113 m to 2,170 m a.s.l.). The precipitation regime of these Alpine regions is very different (latitude 44.5 to 46.5 N) from the typical Mediterranean precipitation regime of the island of Sicily (latitude 37 to 38 N), where the Lerch distribution has already been tested and whose results are compared. In order to verify the homogeneity of the precipitation time series, the Pettitt test was preliminarily performed. In …
From synoptic to interdecadal variability in southern African rainfall: toward a unified view across time scales.
2018
International audience; During the austral summer season (November–February), southern African rainfall, south of 20°S, has been shown to vary over a range of time scales, from synoptic variability (3–7 days, mostly tropical temperate troughs) to interannual variability (2–8 years, reflecting the regional effects of El Niño–Southern Oscillation). There is also evidence for variability at quasi-decadal (8–13 years) and interdecadal (15–28 years) time scales, linked to the interdecadal Pacific oscillation and the Pacific decadal oscillation, respectively. This study aims to provide an overview of these ranges of variability and their influence on regional climate and large-scale atmospheric c…
Spatial and temporal rainfall changes in the Júcar and Segura basins (1955-2016): Fine-scale trends
2018
A daily rainfall database covering the Júcar and Segura river basin authorities (east Iberian Peninsula, Spain) with high spatial density without gaps (890 series) has been created for the complete period 1955–2016. This has allowed a trend analysis of precipitation and dry/wet spells with a better spatial detail and coverage of key headwaters sectors than previous studies in this area. Results show significant negative trends for precipitation prevailing in Júcar area (an annual average loss of 51 mm), especially towards its north interior headwaters. For this last one the annual loss exceeds 200 mm (20% of precipitation). By contrast, certain pre‐littoral sectors and most of the Segura ar…
Measuring hydrological connectivity inside a soil by low field nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometry
2017
Hydrological connectivity inside the soil is related to the spatial patterns inside the soil (i.e., the structural connectivity). This, in turn, is directly associated with the physical and the chemical processes at a molecular level (i.e., the functional connectivity). Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxometry can be successfully applied to reveal both structural and functional components of soil hydrological connectivity. In the present study, the low field NMR relaxometry was applied on water suspended soils sampled at the upstream- and downstream-end of three different length plots. Also the sediments collected from the storage tanks at the end of each plot were water suspended and m…
Multivariate statistical analysis for water demand modelling: implementation, performance analysis, and comparison with the PRP model
2015
Water demand is the driving force behind hydraulic dynamics in water distribution systems. Consequently, it is crucial to accurately estimate the actual water use to develop reliable simulation models. In this study, copula-based multivariate analysis was proposed and used for demand prediction for a given return period. The analysis was applied to water consumption data collected in the water distribution network of Palermo (Italy). The approach produced consistent demand patterns and could be a powerful tool when coupled with water distribution network models for design or analysis problems. The results were compared with those obtained using a classical water demand model, the Poisson re…
Comparing Beerkan infiltration tests with rainfall simulation experiments for hydraulic characterization of a sandy-loam soil
2017
[EN] Saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, K-s, data collected by ponding infiltrometer methods and usual experimental procedures could be unusable for interpreting field hydrological processes and particularly rainfall infiltration. The K-s values determined by an infiltrometer experiment carried out by applying water at a relatively large distance from the soil surface could however be more appropriate to explain surface runoff generation phenomena during intense rainfall events. In this study, a link between rainfall simulation and ponding infiltrometer experiments was established for a sandy-loam soil. The height of water pouring for the infiltrometer run was chosen, establishing a sim…
Run duration effects on the hydrodynamic properties of a loam soil estimated by steady-state infiltration methods
2020
Steady-state methods for the analysis of single-ring infiltration data are commonly applied. However, the duration of an infiltrometer experiment is often established quite subjectively based on the assumption that in general infiltration stabilizes rather quickly in the field. For a loam soil, the effect of the duration of a beerkan run on sorptivity, S, and saturated hydraulic conductivity, Ks, was tested by using the BEST (Beerkan Estimation of Soil Transfer parameters)-steady method and SSBI (Steady version of the Simplified method based on a Beerkan Infiltration run) method for data analysis. The standard experiment, based on a total of 15 water volumes each establishing an initial pon…